UTF-16 Encoding Documentation

Introduction

UTF-16 encoding is a widely used encoding scheme for storing Unicode characters.

It's a type of character encoding that supports both ASCII and Unicode characters. It's particularly important for internationalization and text processing.

What is UTF-16?

UTF-16 represents each character with 16 bits. It's a variable-length encoding, meaning it can represent characters that are less than 16 bits.

It's often used in the browser and server-side applications.

Key Features

• Supports a wide range of Unicode characters
• Variable-length encoding
• Commonly used in web development

Example

Let's consider the character 'é' (é). In UTF-16, it's represented by the 2-bit ASCII code and the 13-bit surrogate code.

Why is it Important?

It enables applications to handle different character sets efficiently, making the web and software more inclusive. It’s the encoding used for most of the characters available on the web.